(Washington) The launch of NASA’s new mega-rocket to the Moon, for the highly anticipated Artemis 1 test mission, cannot take place on Tuesday due to the formation of a storm, the American space agency announced on Saturday .
Posted at 10:54 a.m.
Updated at 11:30 a.m.
Under the threat of tropical storm Ian, currently south of Jamaica, NASA must prepare the rocket to return to shelter in its assembly building.
The storm is expected to strengthen into a hurricane in the coming days and rise via the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida, where the Kennedy Space Center is located from where the rocket is to take off.
“Saturday morning, the teams decided to forego preparing for the takeoff date on Tuesday, in order to allow them to configure the systems to transport the rocket. […] in the assembly building,” NASA wrote on a blog post.
The final decision to retract the rocket will be made on Sunday, however, “to allow more data and analysis to be gathered” as the weather forecast becomes clearer, she added. If it takes place, the operation would then begin “late Sunday or early Monday morning”.
The current firing period, which runs until October 4, would then be missed.
If it is finally decided that the rocket can remain on its launch pad, NASA did not specify whether the previously announced fallback date of October 2 could still be considered for takeoff.
The orange and white SLS rocket, 98 meters high, can withstand wind gusts of up to 137 km/h on its launch pad.
For the complex maneuver of transporting the rocket to its assembly building, the sustained wind speed must not exceed 75 km/h.
After already two failed launch attempts a few weeks ago due to technical problems, this new setback is unwelcome for NASA.
Artemis is its new flagship program, which is to allow humans to return to the Moon, and take the first woman and the first person of color there.
Fifty years after the last mission of the Apollo program, Artémis 1 must be used to verify that the Orion capsule, at the top of the rocket, is safe to transport a crew to the Moon in the future.